Unique Retreats

Placement organization

Name of organization: Unique Retreats
Town/city: Barcelona
Country: Spanje
Website: https://www.uniqueretreats.com/

Name of student: Adriana Berova

Specialist area: ITTI
Placement period: 2017-2018

Information about placement organization

Type of organization: Sales & Marketing Villa Rentals
Organization’s activities: B2B
B2C
Updates, website management
Promotions
Weekly newsletter
Revenue charts
Target group of the organization: Wealthy, upper-class audience, family friendly as well, focus on the asian market
Company culture: Small-scale, semi-formal structure
Number of employees: 20
Dress code: casual
Did the organization meet the agreements you made beforehand? Yes

Information about your placement

In which department(s) are you working?

Marketing

Brief description of your daily activities: Communication with partners/agents
Contracts preparation
Creating listings in various OTAs (i.e Agoda, Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, HomeAway, etc.)
Monthly revenue reports
Weekly eDMs and content editing
Updates on accounts and dealing with internal issues
Brief description of your company assignment: After conducting a broad research into the market and tourism insutry, the company wants to develop a Villa Concierge App. The application will be used to make the whole booking and traveling process easier for the guests of Unique Retreats. Furthermore, with this app they will be able to follow their membership status and see what is near them once thay arrive at the destination. Therefore, my company assignemnet is focused on writing a business plan so that this goal can be accomplished faster and efficiently.
Comment briefly on your supervision by the organization: Good guidence, there are team meetings one a week. Additionally, we have the chance to have a f2f discussion, if not we use Skype as an internal mean of communication. Furthermore there is a very detailed SOP created which everything is described.

Requirements for students on placement

What kind of personal skills are required for this placement? Flexible and responsible with an eye for the detail
Additional company requirements for this placement? MS Office (mainly excel); Additional: Open office, HTML, Video making skills
English: Advanced
Spanish:
French:
German:
Italian:
Other languages:

The trip

Mode of transport to reach your destination: Airplane

Accommodation

How did you arrange your accommodation? Myself
How did you go to work every day? Public transport – metro

Visa / work permit / vaccinations

Do you need a visa? No
Do you need a work permit? No
How did you arrange the necessary documents:
How much time did it take to arrange the necessary documents?
Did you need certain vaccinations? No
How long in advance?

Language course

Did you take a language course before you started your placement? No
Would you recommend to have a language course prior to this placement? Not necessary, however if one prefer can be beneficial for adapting easier to the local life.

The costs in euros

Travelling expenses (e.g. return ticket): € 200
Accommodation (monthly): € 550
Local transport (monthly): € 30-40
General costs of living (monthly): € 400-500
Costs of visa: €
Costs of work permit: €
What did the company pay for/to you? Monthly compensation

Culture

How did you prepare for the country’s culture?
Generally, I am easy going person and as an international student at NHTV, I am used to communicating with various nationalities and cultures. Therefore, for me was quite easy to adapt to the local lifestyle. However, everyone should adjust their expectations and be as tolerant and open-minded as possible in order to enjoy their stay abroad.
Did the culture of the country influence your performance during the placement in any way? No

Future students on placement

Future students are free to contact me for further information: Yes
My e-mail address: berovaadriana@yahoo.com

Other information

Recommendations on what to do and what not to do: Work-wise being able to multi-task is extremely useful, what is more, the team members should be honest and not lie if they have made a mistake or something of that nature. This internship is full-time and the workload is a lot. Therefore, everyone has to be very detailed and efficient and remember to update all the documents and files. During the internship, everyone becomes more secure and confident, anyway in the beginning, is always hard, that is why asking questions is perfectly understandable.
Leisure possibilities in the city/surroundings of where the placement took place: The office is with a very central location and its close to parks, cafes, restaurants, etc. During work, we have stretching and massage sessions organised every Tuesday, which is very cool as most of the time we are sitting.

Media

Youtube link Youtube placement video link